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Growth takes hold for golf club grip maker

SuperStroke sales soar from $700,000 to $15M

Photo by JOHN SOBCZAK
SuperStroke owner Dean Dingman paid $750,000 for the brand in 2009. The business is forecast to post $30 million in revenue this year.

Golfers, as a breed, are sometimes known to buy the latest gadgets in desperation to shave strokes from their game, while equipment makers come and go.

If the weekend duffer sees a PGA Tour pro using something new to win tournaments, odds are that equipment manufacturer will see a payday.

That's held true for Wixom-based SuperStroke, a maker of patented oversized rubber grips for putters. A quarter of PGA players in a given week's tournament are using SuperStroke grips.

Several high-profile PGA Tour victories and strong finishes by pros using SuperStroke grips have turned owner Dean Dingman's $750,000 purchase of the brand in 2009 into a business forecast to post revenue of $30 million this year.

In 2009, SuperStroke sold 5,000 grips for $700,000. Last year, it sold 1.5 million grips for $15 million.

The success has Dingman, the company's co-owner and president, planning to move into grips for other clubs.

SuperStroke isn't Dingman's first foray into golf equipment.

In the late 1990s, Dingman and his brother, Darin, launched a line of low-priced golf clubs called Techniques, and later expanded into upscale custom putters in the $300 range.

They bought the Tiger Shark golf club brand in 2000 from Japanese-owned Allied Holdings Inc. in California for $350,000, and for years marketed the clubs in the U.S., Asia and Europe.

Dean Dingman, 47, said he bought the SuperStroke brand, then based in Wisconsin and advertising on infomercials, after getting into a squabble over trademark names for a grip.

After talks to resolve the issue, the former owner expressed interest in buying Tiger Shark so that it would have a putter to sell with its grips, but eventually Dingman ended up buying SuperStroke.

His plan was to exit the golf club manufacturing and sales business in five years and solely concentrate on grips.

"We did it in three years," he said. Tiger Shark was closed.

The concept of the oversized grip intrigued Dingman as a golf product, and he thought SuperStroke could be tweaked into something that would interest touring pros and the buying public.

"The original product was completely different other than the shape," Dingman said. "We liked the technology, but the product wasn't right. We just weren't sold on the design, weight and feel of the grip they had."

PGA golfer K.J. Choi had won twice using the old SuperStroke, giving the concept some cachet among touring pros and the public.

Using the relationships already built from Tiger Shark, and the budding interest in oversized putter grips, Dingman made the right choices in which pro golfers he paid to endorse his grips.

One is 20-year-old phenom Jordan Spieth, the PGA Tour's 2013 rookie of the year and winner of last year's John Deere Classic. He began 2014 in impressive style by finishing tied for second at the iconic Masters Tournament in April using SuperStroke's Flatso Ultra.

The other is Jason Dufner, a 37-year-old three-time PGA Tour winner who won the 2013 PGA Championship last August while using the SuperStroke grip.

Dufner lost the 2011 PGA Championship in a playoff, and the attention on him and his equipment was heightened because the tournament is one of the PGA's four majors.

"The big jump was with Dufner," Dingman said. "It gave us so much visibility. It put us on the map."

Most recently, Dufner finished second after losing in a playoff at the Crowne Plaza Invitational at Colonial on May 24, using a SuperStroke Slim 3.0 17-inch grip on his Scott Cameron Futura X Dual Balance putter.

SuperStroke also got a boost last year when Phil Mickelson won the British Open while using the company's grips. He's not a paid endorser.

A quarter of PGA touring pros in a given week's tournament are using SuperStroke putter grips, and the company is airing commercials on the Golf Channel featuring Dufner and Spieth touting the product.

Zak Kozuchowski

"How quickly (SuperStroke has) been able to establish themselves on tour is unbelievable," said Zak Kozuchowski, managing editor of Dearborn-based GolfWRX.com, a golf equipment and news website affiliated with Golf Digest.

SuperStroke has staffers on site at every tournament on all of the pro golf tours — the PGA, LPGA, the developmental Web.com Tour, the Champions Tour for pros 50 and older, and tours in Europe and Korea, Dingman said.

"We have a guy on the PGA Tour; Monday through Wednesday he's standing on the putting green, getting them product, letting them test it," he said. "The relationships start on the putting green when they're out playing their practice rounds."

Dingman struck gold with the putter grips as a business because regular golfers typically will own several putters, Kozuchowski said.

"These golfers are willing to spend $15 or $25 to upgrade a putter. That's a smart play by Dean to recognize that golfers are willing to spend on their putters," he said.

SuperStroke also has industry interest: Carlsbad, Calif.-based golf club giant Callaway Golf Co. has a deal with Dingman to put the 15-inch SuperStroke as the standard grip on its Tank Cruiser counterbalanced putters in its ultra-popular Odyssey line.

The technology

Photo by JOHN SOBCZAK
PGATour.com equipment writer Jonathan Wall on the appeal of the SuperStroke: "Unlike a standard putter grip, the oversized version takes the hands off the equation and puts an emphasis on using bigger muscles to develop a repeatable stroke."

SuperStroke grips are simply fatter rubber grips for putters, and they don't taper. The patented design means there is less use of hand muscles in putting, which can translate into fewer strokes.

"What makes it so popular? Unlike a standard putter grip, the oversized version takes the hands off the equation and puts an emphasis on using bigger muscles to develop a repeatable stroke," wrote PGATour.com equipment writer Jonathan Wall in August. "There's a reason why SuperStroke, one of the most popular oversized options on the PGA Tour, has between 23-35 players in the field each week using the grip."

The secret of the thick grip is that it doesn't taper, Dingman said.

"It takes the right hand out of it. All other grips taper," he said.

The colorful grips — they feature a prominent logo easily seen on TV — come in a variety of styles and sizes.

Like much golf equipment, the grips are manufactured in China, and SuperStroke this year opened a Beijing office.

Thirty percent of the firm's sales come from golf-mad Asia. Half of its sales are in the U.S. and 20 percent are in Europe, Dingman said.

"We knew we had to get the brand right, and the 'Play Better Grips' positioning helped them become the technological leader in the category," said Driven COO and principal Kevin Woods. "There haven't been many golf product newcomers with PGA player success, and SuperStroke is one of them."

Dingman, a Farmington Hills native, said he started his golf business in Warren, but moved it, for convenience, to Wixom in 2010 after he moved to Brighton.

What's next

SuperStroke is moving next into grips for drivers, woods, irons and wedges, Dingman said, and the plan is to introduce the new products at the annual PGA Merchandise Show in Orlando, Fla., next year.

"The other 13 clubs, we're not in that business yet," he said. "We feel with our brand and technology we bring, we feel we can take some share."

Oversized grips work only on putters, so SuperStroke has spent the past 18 months working on what Dingman terms a premium rubber compound to, he said, give the grips "a material difference the pros will appreciate."

The expansion will necessitate adding inside sales and marketing staff, he said. The company has 11 employees in Wixom, another 25 sales reps in the field, and two in China to handle manufacturer contracts.

SuperStroke also is in talks about a business relationship with Dave Stockton, the former touring pro and Ryder Cup captain who has become the PGA Tour's $500-an-hour putting guru, Dingman said.

The move into grips for all clubs is a challenge to grab market share from Southern Pines, N.C.-based Golf Pride, which says about 80 percent of all professional golfers are using the company's grips on some or all of their clubs.

Golf Pride, founded in Cleveland in 1949, is a division of Sumter, S.C.-based Eaton Corp., a $22 billion manufacturer of industrial and aerospace power products.

"The overall golf business climate has been challenging for the last decade, so growing the game by adding new golfers has been a major priority in the industry for several years now," said Brandon Sowell, global sales and marketing director for Eaton's golf grip division, via email.

"With that, we've focused much of our energy on educating players about the importance of annual regripping to save strokes and enhance their experience on the course.

"In the putter grip category specifically, players' preferences are very individualized — reflective of the many different ways players hold the club, their stances and postures — which all impact their grip preferences."

A bright spot

SuperStroke's success comes as golf suffers economic malaise.

The Jupiter, Fla.-based National Golf Foundation reported that total rounds played nationally were down 5 percent in 2013 compared to 2012. It also reported that 14 new U.S. golf courses opened last year while 157 closed, the eighth straight year closures have outpaced openings.

A study of American and Japanese golf equipment sales released at the PGA Merchandise Show in January shows that putter sales among the U.S.'s 24 million golfers declined 4 percent last year to $173 million from about $180 million in 2012, according to Bloomberg.

"We anticipated softness, but instead we saw significant decline. We underestimated how significant a decline this would be. We now expect this trend could continue for the balance of the year," he said, adding that there's a "glut" of wholesale and retail golf equipment inventory.

Golf ranges between 10 percent and 25 percent of the retailer's business each quarter, and Dick's plans to reduce golf equipment floor space in its stores because of soft demand. Its inventory includes SuperStroke putter grips.

Retailers are excited about SuperStroke, GolfWRX.com's Kozuchowski said, because it's something customers haven't seen. And with an established name, expansion into grips for other clubs could also prove popular in terms of retail sales.

"At least in the beginning, the interest will be high and the sales will be good," he said.

Either way, Kozuchowski said, he expects the oversized grips to continue to increase in popularity.